Della has been teaching secondary and adult education for over 20 years. She holds a BS in Sociology, MEd in Reading, and is ABD on the MComm in Storytelling.
Peer tutoring is a way for students to collaborate with each other to reinforce classroom learning and provide opportunities to practice. In a reading classroom, peer tutoring is especially effective because students can read to each other and benefit from the camaraderie of enjoying a good story together.
Research indicates that peer tutoring can be especially effective when group rewards are used to increase motivation and engagement. Peer tutoring is effective for both the tutor and the tutee and shows greater gains in emerging readers in 1st-3rd grades. Students in urban areas, those with a low socioeconomic status, diverse schools and classrooms with minority students also show greater benefits from peer tutoring.
The evidence also indicates that peer tutoring is most effective when implemented as part of a school-wide literacy effort and when students are largely in control of the sessions. Peer tutoring is especially effective instruction on reading fluency and for reinforcing concepts learned in the classroom, while providing opportunities for social interaction.
Tutoring is most effective when it is planned and executed carefully with training and other protocols for implementation. Let's take a look at some of the evidence-driven strategies and guidelines for implementing a peer tutoring program in a reading class.
Students who provide tutoring are not teachers and should not be expected to take on that role. Effective peer tutoring should supplement skills taught in class, rather than introduce new skills. Using peer tutors to reinforce classroom learning will provide extra practice for lessons taught by an instructor. Because students are not trained instructors, they can be thought of as reading helpers, there to provide guidance and corrective feedback but not replace regular classroom instruction.
The primary role of peer tutoring in a reading class is to provide opportunities for reading aloud in a small group or a pair, rather than in front of the entire class. Oral reading in a peer tutoring setting provides students with a safe, supportive environment where they can practice reading fluency without the pressure of reading aloud to a large group. This can reduce anxiety in struggling readers who may not be comfortable being put on the spot with an audience. For this reason, it is an effective strategy to limit peer tutors to groups of 2-4 participants.
A peer tutoring program should provide training to participating students. Some of this training might include the behavioral skills needed to be polite and respectful with each other. Using praise effectively is another element of peer tutor training that students may need to learn. Training should also include some academic intervention strategies for making gracious corrections to their tutees' mistakes and showing how to improve fluency.
For example, student tutors may already have a conversational reading flow, but teaching other students to improve their read aloud fluency may require a different skill set. Of course students should also be trained in the importance of treating other students with kindness and courtesy. This training should not be a one-and-done effort, but rather will need to be maintained and refreshed over time.
When recruiting students as peer tutors, consider those students who have mastered the reading skills they are expected to use as well as the training on how to be a tutor. Not all students recruited as tutors may be able to demonstrate mastery of tutoring skills needed to be a peer tutor. In other words, just because a student is a good reader does not necessarily mean they will be a good tutor.
To demonstrate these essential tutoring skills, trainers can use some creative strategies like role-playing, cooperative learning activities, and pairing together student tutor trainees to invite students to show what they know about how to be a good tutor. Tutor trainees can take turns reading to each other, listening, and providing corrective feedback. Because these students are more advanced readers, they may have to pretend to make mistakes to practice making corrections.
Periodically, instructors will need to conduct an integrity check to determine that the elements of effective tutoring are being adequately implemented. Teachers will occasionally need to observe tutoring sessions to ensure that tutors are using praise and corrective feedback in a timely manner. They can develop a checklist or rubric to assess the quality of tutoring and ensure that students are using their time wisely. This checklist can also determine how frequently and which topics should be covered during ongoing training refreshers. Monitoring the efficacy of a peer tutoring program will ensure that students are getting the most of the program, that adults can monitor progress, and that the tutoring can be used as an effective measurement of improvement in reading skills.
While many peer tutoring programs will pair advanced students with struggling students, pairing students of similar ability levels is also effective. One important caveat should be mentioned here. Peer tutoring should never replace a comprehensive gifted instruction program, and students who are extremely advanced compared to their classmates should never be forced to work with struggling students as a means of providing more supplemental gifted instruction. Students who are gifted do not show the same gains in peer tutoring as their average peers and in fact, are likely to suffer academically when the whole of the gifted program consists of providing tutoring to classmates.
In this lesson, we discussed some of the research-based benefits of a peer tutoring program in reading instruction. Peer tutoring means that students work together in pairs or small groups to provide practice in oral reading instruction. Trained tutors can provide the praise and correction needed to assist struggling students with the help they need to improve. This training should include academic skills instruction as well as interpersonal social skills. Instructors will still need to provide the training and monitoring of the program to ensure it is implemented according to evidence-based best practices.
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